Page 55 of The Good Part
‘I can see the button!’ Felix roars, diving for the toy basket, and I feel a rush of adrenaline, as though something huge is about to happen.
An hour later, Felix and I lie on the upstairs hallway completely spent.
‘We did it,’ he says, reaching out to high-five me.
‘We did,’ I say, glancing into Amy’s room, where she’s now in her cot ready for bed. Our mission to get to the castle took a detour via the kitchen for hero fuel (fishfingers and chips) and boat fuel (milk), which Amy drank on behalf of the boat. Then we made it up the waterfall to the Bathtub of Many Questions, where Felix had to correctly spell five words to turn on the Taps of Destiny. Amy was delightfully compliant throughout the whole game and was exhausted by the time we finally deposited her in her castle (cot).
‘That was one hell of a mission,’ I say, offering Felix a hand to pull him up to standing. We walk downstairs and through the living room, now scattered with cushions and toys. The laundry pile is halfway across the hall, from when Felix was digging to find a tow rope for the boat. The kitchen is still a disaster zone from Amy’s tea... and lunch... and breakfast. Yet despite the housepocalypse, a new calm confidence has taken hold of me. Maybe Icando this parenting thing. I’ll put the house to rights, prep all the things I need for tomorrow, get Felix to bed, then lock myself away in the office and email Michael all my show ideas. Then I will try to do it all again tomorrow, only better.
‘That was fun,’ Felix says quietly as I begin to load the dishwasher. ‘Mummy doesn’t do that stuff much any more. She doesn’t play with us, she’s always too busy.’
‘Is she?’ I ask, then feel a loyalty towards my future self. ‘She has a lot on her plate. I’m sure she’d want to play with you more if she could.’
‘I know. She’s a great mummy.’ He looks up at me, and I sense he wants to tell me he’s not being disloyal either. ‘She does the best birthday parties. Last year she made me this dinosaur cake. All my friends said it was the best cake ever, it had all these teeth made of M&Ms.’
I hum, biting my lip, feeling a sudden swell of emotion behind my eyes.
‘We didn’t cook the broccoli,’ Felix says, pointing to a broccoli head, sitting forgotten on the chopping board.
‘Do you want broccoli for dessert?’
‘I guess,’ he says, shrugging.
I put a pan of water on the stove, and Felix picks up a knife to start chopping.
‘Wait, can you use a knife?’
‘You trust me with a grenade but not with a kitchen knife?’ I laugh out loud, and there’s that smile again, the one he tries to hide, but he can’t disguise his pleasure in making me laugh.
‘Hey?’ comes a voice from the doorway and Felix and I both turn to see Sam looking around at the chaos in bemusement.
‘Hey, Dad,’ Felix says, running over to hug his father.He’s home early?I was going to tidy up before he got back, I was going to do better tomorrow.
Sam looks exhausted, and I have the urge to hug him too, but I’m wary. He’s got that ‘disappointed teacher’ look as he surveys the chaos.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ I tell him. ‘We were playing a game in here. I’ll tidy it all up.’
‘It’s fine,’ Sam says, walking through to the living room, picking up sofa cushions and putting them back where they belong. ‘You should be in bed, buddy,’ he tells Felix. ‘It’s a school day tomorrow. How about you go brush your teeth and I’ll come up and say goodnight.’
Felix gives me a look, conspirator and commiserator, before heading towards the stairs.
‘How come you’re home early?’ I ask.
‘Some of the musicians were ill. We couldn’t record everything we wanted to. I left you a voice memo...’
‘Sorry, I’ve hardly looked at my phone. Maria wasn’t well, then Amy was sick. I didn’t make it to London.’
Sam picks up a cuddly shark and collapses in an armchair. ‘I wouldn’t have left if I thought you’d be on your own. You should have called me, Lucy.’
He’s probably right, today has been a complete disaster, just look at this place. But I can’t help feeling disappointed that he sees it that way, because playing with Felix and Amy this evening, I finally got a glimpse of another side to parenting – the fun part, the part I might actually be good at.
‘I’m going to jump in the shower, the train was a sauna,’ Sam says. ‘Then we’ll deal with all this, I guess.’
As he turns to go up the stairs, I realise he hasn’t even kissed me since he came in. How have we gone from our amazing Saturday night to this? Maybe if I make the first move, I can get back to where we were, to the flirting and the teasing and the getting naked. I follow him up the stairs. The shower is already running, so I pull off my clothes in the bedroom. My body aches with tiredness, but as soon as I see Sam’s naked body in the shower, a new energy takes hold.
When I wrap a hand around his chest, he flinches, surprised, but then he holds my hand against his, and turns around to face me. Water streams down over our bodies, my skin bristles with the coldness of the shower and the anticipation of his touch. Those first few days, lusting after Sam felt like lusting after someone else’s husband, but since date night, I’ve made my peace with the moral ambiguity. Future Me wouldwantme to have sex with her husband. I would, if I was her, which I am. Besides, it would be wrong to let this kind of insane chemistry go to waste. Tilting my head up to kiss him, I feel so small. Every man I’ve been with before feels like a fumbling boy compared to Sam. As he kisses me back, I let out a moan, and then his hands push me back against the wall of the shower.
‘You know, I’ve never had sex in a shower before,’ I whisper in his ear. As soon as the words leave my mouth, I feel him freeze, his hands still on my body. I look up at him, eyes wide in surprise, his face full of some undefinable pain. ‘What? What’s wrong?’
